The local government in one eastern North Carolina county can’t be held responsible for “serious problems” with chronically underachieving local schools, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Responsibility for Halifax County’s lagging district falls instead on North Carolina’s state legislature and its executive branch, judges argued.

That ruling comes after five students in the county and their parents or legal guardians accused Halifax County commissioners of unequal funding for the county’s three school districts, slighting two districts largely composed of minority students.

It’s a pivotal ruling related to the state’s long-running Leandro case, which began in 1994 when plaintiffs in several low-wealth counties, including Halifax, argued students were not afforded the same chance to succeed as their peers in more affluent North Carolina counties.

In the Leandro case, the court found the state has a constitutional obligation to provide a “sound basic education” to students.

The plaintiffs in Tuesday’s ruling said decisions made by local county commissioners infringed on that right, although two out of three judges found that the local board of commissioners cannot be solely blamed for the districts’ myriad issues with facilities, supplies and performance listed in the case.

“The court’s ruling in the Halifax case really tries to narrow the scope of the constitutional right to a sound basic education in a way that I don’t think the court that decided the Leandro case intended,” said Dorosin.

Issues in Halifax’s minority-dominated districts include flagging test scores, deteriorating facilities and marked difficulty in hiring quality, experienced teachers—all in contrast with a third, primarily white local school district.

The majority sided with an earlier trial court dismissal in the case, finding “serious problems in the schools in Halifax County, but because this defendant—the Halifax County Board of Commissioners—does not bear the constitutional duty to provide a sound basic education, we affirm the trial court’s order dismissing this action.”

Instead, the court found that responsibility rests with state leaders in the N.C. General Assembly and the executive branch, including Gov. Roy Cooper, the State Board of Education and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction.

However, one dissenting judge, Chief Judge Linda McGee, wrote in her opinion that local governments have a “role to play” when it comes to the financial backing of the public schools.

Because one judge dissented, the plaintiffs will have the right to appeal their case to the state Supreme Court. Dorosin said Tuesday he would be speaking to his clients in the coming days to discuss further appeal.

Details may not be public yet, but North Carolina K-12 leaders on the State Board of Education will look to pass down $3.2 million in General Assembly-ordered budget calls in a special meeting Tuesday morning.

As reported by Policy Watch last week, the legislative spending cuts for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) are likely to impact personnel in the state agency and its services for poor and rural districts across the state.

This year’s $3.2 million cut is part of a two-year reduction for the state’s top education bureaucracy, which has been under withering scrutiny from Republican legislators in recent years. The agency had already weathered roughly $20 million in funding reductions since 2009.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to like the cuts we make, because they’ll have to be in the area of services to the districts,” State Board of Education Chairman Bill Cobey said last week.

DPI Superintendent Mark Johnson, a Republican elected last year, has been silent about the cuts thus far, although Cobey said the superintendent has shared multiple proposals for dishing out the cuts.

Cobey noted the daily changes to those proposals last week.

Board members are expected to vote on the cuts Tuesday. But a DPI official, citing the confidentiality of personnel information, said details on the cuts won’t be available to the public and the media until after Tuesday’s meeting.

The editorial follows a report from Policy Watch last week on a budget directive from GOP lawmakers that eliminates top positions at the State Board of Education and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, specifically targeting several with ties to former Democratic state Superintendent June Atkinson.

When Republican Mark Johnson, a 33-year-old former Forsyth County school board member, upset incumbent state Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, a Democrat, in the 2016 election, Republicans in the General Assembly were rubbing their hands together so hard they could have started a forest fire.

In Johnson, who advocates for charter schools and expansion of a wrong-headed voucher program that takes money from public schools and gives it to parents to enable them to send their kids to private school, legislative leaders like Senate President pro-tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore had an inexperienced superintendent to whom they could give marching orders.

In the latest example of legislative meddling, a budget mandate reported by N.C. Policy Watch, a project of the N.C. Justice Center, would fire several education officials from the administration of Atkinson, and would eliminate a top staff member’s position with the State Board of Education, which by statute has charge of policy. Martez Hill is the board’s executive director. Johnson and the board, led by former U.S. Rep. Bill Cobey, a Republican and experienced public education advocate, have repeatedly clashed as Johnson, with the support of right-wing lawmakers, has tried to consolidate power. He’s doing so, of course, with direct input from Jones Street.

This is outrageous. Said Cobey: “I’ve been told offline that they eliminated Martez’s position not because of him, but because he was executive director of the state board, which I think is a sad state of affairs.”

No kidding. Johnson ought to be seeking and taking as much advice as he can from experienced hands like Cobey. The superintendent has a lot to learn. In fact, he has everything to learn, and he seems a lukewarm supporter of conventional or mainstream public schools, which isn’t good. And a weak superintendent gives full control of public education to the people who want it, the GOP leaders of the General Assembly.

This kind of action also erodes confidence in the Department of Public Instruction, internally and externally.

Republicans seem determined to dismantle the public education system that has served North Carolina well for over 100 years. In fact, it may be said that the state’s strong public schools transformed it, giving hope to millions of young people and opening their lives to the endless possibilities that education should inspire. Why GOP leaders want to meddle in and damage public schools remains a mystery, given that the majority of North Carolina families have their children in public schools.

The State Board is hardly a liberal outpost, far from it. But it has provided needed supervision of Johnson, who has kept a low profile since taking office, perhaps on the orders of Berger and Moore. Who knows?

What we do know is that these latest maneuvers are transparent, intended by lawmakers to weaken the state board and empower politicians with guidance of the schools. That’s not good.

“Even though our economy continues to recover, our public schools are facing a permanent recession caused by Republican lawmakers who would rather give tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations instead of investing in public education,” Logan Smith, communications director for liberal-leaning Progress NC Action, said.

The advocacy organization touted new teacher pay numbers that show, when adjusted for inflation, pay at nearly every experience level lags pay in 2008, before a Wall Street collapse brought on a massive economic slowdown.

Additionally, the group says, North Carolina spending, when adjusted for inflation, is $500 less per student today than it was in 2008. And state spending on textbooks, which received a non-recurring, $11.2 million bump in the final legislative budget, remains 40% less per student than 2008.

Protesters said they planned to seek a meeting with N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore after their press conference to discuss the budget Monday. Later, Smith said Moore was not available when protesters visited, although they spoke briefly with some of the House speaker’s aides.

“Clearly, he did not talk to any actual educators before writing this budget,” added Smith.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper announced that he would veto the state legislature’s $23 billion spending package Monday, although the Republican-dominated legislature likely has enough votes to override Cooper’s veto.

Meanwhile, veteran teachers blasted lawmakers’ approved pay raises in recent years, which as of the most recent national rankings, lifted the state’s average educator pay ranking from 41st nationally to 35th.

Those numbers, however, did not include the pay raises approved by lawmakers this month, although teachers and other K-12 advocates say the legislature’s pay hikes won’t go far enough.

They say experienced educators were left behind when lawmakers developed their salary scale. Amy Daaleman, a 25-year music teacher in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, said this year’s average 3.3% raise for teachers comes out to about another $30 per month for her.

“I feel disrespected that my value to the state to stay and teach another year as an educator is only worth $30 a month,” said Daaleman. “What is the logic in staying in a profession that has more and more work only to lose money?”

“I want the public to understand what a sham this support for public education is,” said Campbell.

Teacher pay and textbook funding wasn’t the only gripe leveled at GOP state lawmakers Monday. Teachers and advocates also shredded lawmakers over the state’s looming class-size funding issue, teacher assistant funding and a state budget provision that eliminates retirement health benefits for new teachers beginning in 2021.

“Taking away retirement benefits would be horrible for teacher recruitment,” said Smith. “And it makes it even harder than it already is to retain the educators your children deserve.”

North Carolina state lawmakers unveiled a compromise budget package Monday that bundles a new round of teacher pay raises amid steep cuts for the state’s top K-12 agency and support for school choice favorites like vouchers and education savings accounts.

The $23 billion spending plan is expected to move swiftly through the legislature. State senators are expected to hold the first of two votes on the budget deal Tuesday afternoon, while the House is expected to schedule votes later this week.

Some of the deal’s most controversial provisions are likely to emerge in its public education provisions, which include unpopular reforms to the school performance grading system and rapid expansion of the private school voucher program without the accountability requirements included in the House budget passed last month.

Here’s a round-up of the top public school components of the legislature’s budget deal:

Teacher pay: Includes an average 3.3% raise in first year. In its inclusion of raises for most steps on the salary scale (with the biggest raises bound for teachers on steps 17-24), the plan is closer to the House salary schedule than the Senate’s proposal, which focused its raises on mid-career teachers. GOP budget writers say their goal is to reach average pay of $55,000 by 2020.

Department of Public Instruction (DPI): The compromise plan softens the staggering, 25-percent budget cuts for the state’s K-12 bureaucracy included in the Senate budget, although it retains major reductions for an agency that focuses its intervention and training efforts on low-income and low-performing school districts. The new plan includes 6 percent reductions in the first year (about $3.2 million), followed by a 13.9 percent cut in the second year (about $7.29 million), all while adding 24 new reporting requirements for the agency. This does not include the budget’s plan to chop 11 positions in the agency, including three filled jobs, a loss of another $900,000 or so in funding.

DPI audit: After years of allegations of wasteful spending in DPI, the budget includes $1 million for GOP Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson to commission an audit of the agency. Interestingly, the second year of the spending plan includes a $1 million DPI cut based on “anticipated savings” from that audit. The spending plan also includes $29 million in non-recurring funds over two years for a “modernization” of DPI financial accounting, a plan GOP lawmakers say will allow for increased transparency in the agency.

School districts’ central offices: In keeping with the legislature’s clear skepticism of K-12 administrators, the budget includes a 7 percent cut to the state’s central office allotment for school districts in the first year, and an 11 percent cut in the second year, both a modest reduction from the Senate’s earlier proposal.

Vouchers: As expected, the legislature retains a $10 million annual expansion of the so-called Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides public funds for low-income children to attend private schools. The program, which is slotted for $44.8 million in funding in 2017-2018, is a lightning rod for public school defenders, who point out private schools lack the same accountability and non-discrimination requirements of public schools. And, with a report this year suggesting the state’s voucher students are not being helped by enrollment in private schools, the final budget deal eschews House calls for an independent study of voucher student performance and the requirement that voucher students take one nationally standardized test for comparison purposes. However, it allows for a task force to mull ways to evaluate voucher student performance, with a report expected next March.

Personal education savings accounts: Labeled “vouchers on steroids” by critics, this program allows for the state to divert public funds to the private accounts of parents who seek to enroll their children in private schools. While it limits participation to parents of children with disabilities this year, it’s likely a first step in opening the door for greater access in the coming years, despite widespread questions about private school accountability and allegations of misspent cash in other states.

School performance grades: The compromise deal nixes House proposals to reform a long-criticized method for assessing school performance. Advocates say student growth—rather than the school’s overall performance—should play a greater role in determining the score. Currently, the score is determined by 80 percent performance, 20 percent growth. A House proposal to establish separate grades did not survive conference committee negotiations. In addition, the deal announced this week also moves to a more stringent 10-point grading system in 2019-2020, rather than the 15-point scale preferred by advocates for school districts.

Textbooks and classroom supplies: Amid myriad plans for boosting the state’s oft-criticized funding for classroom supplies, the conference committee emerged with a fairly conservative proposal, allocating about $11.2 million in a non-recurring boost to the allotment in the coming year. Critics say the state continues to fall far short of the necessary funding levels for this allocation, forcing teachers and school districts to spend to provide for updated classroom materials.

Children with disabilities: One of the few bright spots of earlier budget proposals, according to some education advocates, the compromise increases the funding cap for children with disabilities, slotting another $6.3 million in recurring funds.

Teaching Fellows: The plan, as expected, uses $6 million in cash from the state’s Education Endowment Fund to fund a new version of the teacher scholarship plan controversially scrapped by GOP lawmakers in 2011. The new version will focus on science, engineering, math, technology and special education, offering university scholarships for prospective teachers in exchange for a commitment to work in North Carolina. Lawmakers say they are hoping to address a well-documented drop in UNC students seeking teaching degrees in recent years.

Superintendent’s office: With the state’s newly-elected GOP Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson mired in a battle with the State Board of Education over the hiring powers of his office, state lawmakers are getting involved. The budget includes a House proposal to allocate $700,000 for Johnson to create up to 10 new positions that report solely to him. The proposal had earlier earned the rebuke of the GOP chairman of the state board, who says the positions and funding are needed for other roles in DPI.

Governor’s School: The compromise deal bypasses a Senate proposal to ax state funding in 2018-2019 for the five-week, summer program, which focuses on academics and arts.

Advanced teaching roles: The budget will spend an additional $7.1 million in non-recurring funds next year, bringing the total to $8.2 million, on a three-year pilot program aimed at offering incentives for so-called “teaching leaders” in school districts.

Upcoming Events

Friday, Feb. 16

12:00 PM

Crucial Conversation – Prof. Peter Edelman discusses his new book, Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

Prof. Edelman is coming to the Triangle to mark the 50th anniversary of Durham-based nonprofit MDC. His visit is the first of a series of MDC-sponsored events focused on ways that Southern leaders can work together to create an Infrastructure of Opportunity that shapes a South where all people thrive.”